Forum Moderators: mack
Plus, MSN has spidered 300 pages of my websites, while Google has spidered only 1.
I love MSN and believe it will beat the Google sometime in the future. If Microsoft does not beat Google, then it will buy it off and incorporate it into MSN.
Any thoughts about MSN? Post them here.
If Microsoft does not beat Google, then it will buy it off and incorporate it into MSN
Not at current share prices -- Bill Gates will have to add new word to his vocublurary: mortgage. :)
It would be a much more stable business, and a single algo update on one SE would not have the ability to rain down death and despair as it does now.
Their final verdict was, possibly, the .com bubble all over again.
In business terms they are not in the same league as MSN, though their search engine wipes the floor with MSN
I'd rather there be 20 search engines each with 5% market share, than 2 or 3 with 99% of it.
It would be a much more stable business, and a single algo update on one SE would not have the ability to rain down death and despair as it does now.
I agree, but let me put a slight twist on this one. Where the barriers to entry are fairly low we would expect to see the market dominated by about five SE, each with about 20% market share. At the start of the WWW, this was quite possible because the web was small and the investment needed to support a search engine infrastucture was small.
Today, we are seeing much of the same as we saw during the industrial revolution. The market dominated by just a couple of large companies. As the web grew, so did the barrier to entry for search engines. With the infrastructure of Google it is very hard to compete - but not impossible. Gigablast is a good example of what can be done. It has to be done right and it has to start slowly.
At the start of the WWW, this was quite possible because the web was small and the investment needed to support a search engine infrastucture was small.
I am building a distributed WWW engine supported by the community itself - the costs are not that high, what's really hard is to actually build critical mass of people who believe it can be done.
I'd rather there be 20 search engines each with 5% market share, than 2 or 3 with 99% of it.
It would be a much more stable business, and a single algo update on one SE would not have the ability to rain down death and despair as it does now.
That's common-sense free-market economics. Unfortunately, it deprives the corporates from extorting lots of money from the public (which you can do when you have the monopoly) and as such wont happen. Unless people resist.
Personaly I like alltheweb.com
Matt
I think it would be good for everybody if Google would break into many smaller pieces, either physically or virtually.
What if Google divided its engineers into, say, 10 groups? Each of them was given a data center on which they could make their own tweaks and algo changes. Then, when somebody used Google to search, they were randomly assigned to one of these different data centers.
Don't like the results? Try again on a different data center.
As opposed to how it is now -- don't like the results? Deal with it, or try another SE.
Right now if you're on page 1 you've got it made, page 3 and you're screwed. What if everybody on those 3 pages was given a median position of page 2 rather than one of the extremes?
If Google would change from direct links to rewrites, they could find out which data center's results are the best just by logging user behavior. Seems like a more scientific approach than just spitting into the fan every few months.
Today, we are seeing much of the same as we saw during the industrial revolution. The market dominated by just a couple of large companies. As the web grew, so did the barrier to entry for search engines. With the infrastructure of Google it is very hard to compete - but not impossible. Gigablast is a good example of what can be done. It has to be done right and it has to start slowly.
I think somebody is going to have to come up with a completely revolutionary idea if they want to make a dent in G or its two bastardized siblings.
To be honest, G's results are fairly good. I can't think of a time when I've been unable to find what I was looking for if I persisted long enough.
Sometimes a search engine simply cannot know what you're looking for. Suppose you're researching some historic battle from Charlemagne's era... and suppose some French pop band decided to name their new album after that same battle. You need to give the SE more data. But most users are too lazy.
There's no way to get around the fact that users are going to have to jump through a few hoops when they run into such ambiguities.
If you type in enough qualifying data into any of the 3 SE's you'll generally find exactly what you're looking for. Just because my website didn't come up when I typed in "widgets" doesn't mean they couldn't give me exactly what I was looking for if I was a customer typing in "buy green twisted widgets."
The WWW has become so big that it's suffering from Ebayitus. Too many suppliers ruining it for everybody. And since Ebay is the only online auction in town... good luck if you're not the most efficient operation in town.
In the distant future maybe somebody will reinvent bricks and mortar, and it will become all the rage.
Well that post was sort of all over the board, but that's how I think.
<<distributed WWW engine supported by the community itself>>
Distributed... as in it runs on the computers of the users?
Now, if you could make the users the "shareholders" in some form, you might get critical mass...
Now, if you could make the users the "shareholders" in some form, you might get critical mass...
No problem in principle, the issue is finding a good formulae that works well in practice -- actual share allocations are hard if high number of people from different countries get involved.
We're OT...
Sticky coming.
